Category Archives: Art Textiles

Vietnam Textiles

There are many artistic avenues through which the Vietnamese express themselves such as silk painting, theatre, and wood carving. Below are explanations of the origins and development of a few key textiles and techniques. Vietnam textiles are beautiful.

Silk

Vietnam textiles have been amazing for centuries, Vietnam has been silk weaving and creating beautiful embroidery. During feudal times silk was thought of as a great luxury, only worn by kings, queens and mandarins. Through out history and its dynasties, Vietnam has always had rules concerning colour, ornamentation, style and fabric of clothes worn by aristocrats. The clothes of those in power featured the royal symbols of dragons, phoenixes and tortoises.

Vietnam’s best silk is called ‘Ha Dong’ silk and comes from of Ha Tay, southwest of Hanoi in the Red River Delta. It is believed that the art of silk weaving originated here some 2,000 years ago. However it was between the 16th 18th centuries when this region’s silk industry flourished. Today, techniques and quality have changed but there are many villages that always have and still do produce silk, for example La Ca.

To produce silk, the first stage is the weaving of the cloth to make every thread uniformly in line to ensure a smooth and soft fabric. It is then soaked, washed, dried, kept with forest resin, dyed, and sun dried twice. The resin is extracted at different points of the season for different colours. This chemical free process creates beautifully shiny and durable silk.

Embroidery

All over Vietnam, its people use embroidery as a form of cultural expression. It was introduced into the northprovinces of Vietnam during the 17th century from China, when originally silk embroidery only used five thread colours – yellow, red, green, violet and blue.

However embroidery is thought to have existed in the village of Van Lam for seven centuries. More than 75% of the population is skilled in the embroidery with lace, due to teachings being passed down through generations. Their work varies from the size of a hand to large wall hangings. Tribes like the Hmong and Dao also use their own unique intricate embroidery and braiding styles to embellish their clothing. The Hmong also use beautiful batik designs to decorate their clothing.

Applique

Applique is used by the Hmong to set apart and identify particular tribes, but was first developed as a way of story telling. Now it has developed into an art form for many communities. This ancient technique involves sewing on fabric shapes by hand to produce decorative patterns and shapes.

If you’d like to find out more about these techniques and get involved in the culture, Colouricious are running a textile trip to Vietnam in November 2015. If you would like to find out more, do not hesitate to visit our website or contact us below.

Wonderful Rogan Art

You can be excused if you have never heard of Rogan Art before as it is only practiced in the Kutch district in the Gugurat region of Western India. Rogan Art involves the painting of a castor oil-like paint onto silk fabric and then dyed with natural paints. The designs are intricate and detailed and can take many hours of painstaking work to complete.
Given the scarcity of Rogan Art (it isn’t even that well known in India) it is not something you will see very often on crafting sites but we do have a page on the Colouricious site that is dedicated to Rogan Art and show you some of the wonderful designs that can be created using it.

We are planning to see this textile art first hand during our textile holiday to Gujarat, that is available for booking now! So if you love this style of hand painting textile – Rogan Art then do come with us to see this for yourself in Gujarat which in in the Western Region of India. You can travel independently (advisable for our American & Australian guests), and join the group in Ahmadabad. Come by yourself and meet like minded ladies, come with a friend/sister/neighbour/mother/daughter – the more the merrier! We have a wonderful guide called Gulam who specialises in this region so you will have top quality experiences, with me as your host too!

An exciting year for Colouricious Holidays

We are really excited about the up coming months as we have some wonderful trips and tours planned. The Luxury Holiday in March in fully booked as is the Creative Jaipur in September. We are repeating that trip again in January 2017 so you do not miss out!

Our visit to Kashmir in July has really caught your attention as it is a wonderful region to visit with lots of fantastic scenery as well as lots of textile art and crafts to see and do. We have incorporated the Hemis Festival as well into the trip so there really is something for everyone on this tour. There is now only a handful of places left after we mentioned it in last weeks newsletter, so if you don’t want to miss out, then reserve your place now. You will go to places and see amazing sights that you never knew existed!

In the Rogan Art section we mentioned about our trip to Gujurat in October. We will be incorporating lots into this 14 day trip including workshops incorporating silk weaving and bead work, screen and block printing, yarn dyeing, and several others that we know you will really enjoy. We will also be attended a shisha embroidery class which is my personal favourite activity!

The western region of India has a very deep history of tradition and culture and they use embroidery and shisha mirrors in a lot of their crafts. This will be a super trip to go on and we would love for you to join us.

If you are interested in this tour of Gujurat, then visit our website and use our online booking form to reserve your place.

Beautiful Gift Sets

You will love the new gorgeous wooden block sets that would be super to use for some of your Spring craft projects. They are crammed packed full of blocks of all shapes and sizes, and some also have sets of fabric paint as well, so you really are getting a craft project in a box! Because each block is hand carved, we have a limited number of each set, so if one or more of these catch your eye, then get over to our website and make your purchase to make sure you get your wish!

Olive Branch
Just click on the set you want and we will get it sent out to you as quickly as we can.

Happy Block Printing!

Please spread the Colouricious word

Many of you have been spreading the word about the Colouricious newsletter – thank you. We need your help to help Colouricious grow, please! We are always looking for ways to spread the Colouricious word and get more people to know about us and the crafts that we do. By growing we will be able to expand our offering of blocks, holidays and anything else to do with textiles.

You can find us on Social Media as we have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest. We would be very grateful if you could find some time to spread our message with your friends by sharing our Social Media posts or just telling anybody and everybody to come over to our website to take a look and subscribe to our newsletter.

V&A Exhibition The Fabric of India

V&A Exhibition The Fabric of India – This exhibition at the V&A Museum in London is one of the most exhibitions to visit, in our opinion. Visit this exhibition to learn about the heritage and culture of Indian textiles, in what The Times newspaper refers to as dazzling craftsmanship. What is really magnificent is Tipu Sultan’s tent which is the largest item in the exhibition. Not sure about the 19th century dress embellished with beetle wings. During the last Colouricious block printing holiday to Jaipur, we did actually see a local craftsman processing these beetle wings. So that textile technique still goes on. Many of the 10,000 items have been part of the collection made by the East India Company that was created in the 18th century. As you travel through the exhibition, you will learn about raw materials, from silks, cotton, wool, goat hair, and move onto natural dyeing techniques from Indigo to pomegranate, block printing and weaving. The most exciting aspect of this exhibition is that so many of these techniques have been witnessed by guests attending our Colouricious Textile Holidays. So please do go and visit this exhibition to start your journey of discovery for Indian textiles.

Go visit this fabulous exhibition of The fabric of India at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Having been to this exhibition and are hungry to learn more about Indian textiles, then come on a

Fabric Printing Techniques

On our Colouricious block printing holiday you will be able to learn from the many different fabric printing techniques you will get to see. This trip is perfect for every fan of block printing since you will be able to see such a large range of fabric printing techniques. From block printing to Dabu printing, this holiday is amazing. The vibrant colours and fabulously detailed designs of the fabric printing will have you so inspired, so that when you get home you too will be able to try out these fabric printing techniques! The fabric printing industry in India is so exciting and you will get to witness such an interesting part of it on our Colouricious block printing holiday to India this December. You will be personally escorted to many fabric printing workshops and be able to learn and understand a wide range of new fabric techniques.

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